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Time for New Rig? or would changing from Win7 32 to 64bit help?

UnderCover

By UnderCover, Member
in Tech Reviews, Support and PC Builds

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UnderCover Newbie

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Hey peeps. I use to know all the latest and greatest hardware and blah, blah, blah.

 

I am wondering if it is worth the money to get more memory for my existing rig and changing from 32bit win7 to 64bit? or based on my P.C. specs should I just breakdown and buy a new P.C.? This is where I would appriciate your opinion.

 

My current P.C. is

 

Dell XPS720 Delivered 2007/10/30

Processor QX6700 liquid cooled and it is suppose to be overclocked to 3.2gHz (but displays 2.8gHz)

Two Corsair 1GB 800M, 128x64,240,EPP, 2.20V ver 1.2 (two slots empty) (DDR2 SDRAM)

Two nvidia Geforce 8800 GTX

Two hard disks size 466GB Raid set as data split (Not redundant)

 

 

Win 7 processor score is 7.2

Win 7 Memory score 5.5

Win 7 graphics score 7.3

Win 7 gaming graphics score 7.3

Win 7 hard disk score 5.9

 

I am starting to notice the screen at times in game freezing up just a bit, possibly saying hesitating would be a better word, Windows runs so much junk in the background I figured if I stepped up more memory and 64 bit would that help? or am I just wasting my time.

 

Plus this rig came with vista 32, I purchase Win 7 upgrade that has 32 and 64 on it. I upgraded to win7 32 years ago, does anyone know if I can use that upgrade disk to go to 64? Or do I need to buy a full win7 64 version?

 

Thanks

UC

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UnderCover Newbie

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Well I can answer one of my questions. It appears I can upgrade from 32 to 64, but I need to back everything up plus I need to re-install all my programs.

 

Trust I can put everything on a usb drive and then get it back from that.

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Biggs Newbie

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Yeah reinstalling windows is always a nice project, I find everything runs nice and smooth afterwards. Just make sure you have a list of everything you need to reinstall, update, etc. and all of your keys for all games/software.

 

I was trying to think of how to upgrade my system a few months ago, reason was primarily the DDR2 memory that my old mobo required. The price for DDR2 is double that of DDR3, so that made me want to get a new mobo.. looking at new mobos I wanted a newer CPU compatability, which meant I should get a new CPU.. etc etc... so I made a new one. Worked out ok since I sold the old system for $600 to a friend.

 

Buuut, if you're going to upgrade to 64 bit, and all you need is a set of 8GB... that may work out cheaper in the end for you than starting over :-)

 

32-bit you can use up to ~3.5GB, I think windows reserves some?

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Flitterkill Contributor

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Yeah, what Biggs said about the 3.5 memory seen by 32 bit Win 7

 

You are just right there on the line between needing an upgrade and holding out longer. A year from now yes, probably. But that is a beast of a system from when it was built.

 

You really won't see much of a speed bump from 32 to 64.

 

Two things I've noticed with slow Win 7 systems. One - The usual crapware and/or tons of installed programs with their own stuff running in the background whether you want it to or not. Two - poorly defragged hard drives after years of use. To go along with this, if you ever take your hard drive down to almost full, then clear out some room, you probably encroached on the swap file and now that is scattered across the hard drive degrading performance.

 

Clear out dead weight programs. Run msconfig from the run menu and make sure you don't have 100's of programs running from the get go. Defrag. Let that puppy cook overnight.

 

Then check back in.

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UnderCover Newbie

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Thanks Flitterkill, my harddisk has 300GB free space and says it is zero % fragmented. The biggest pain is windows search.... plus Windows live feed, I have feeds turned off in livemail but for some reason live feed will start running in the background.

 

I also have norton 360 and it will up and do stuff while gaming..... I turn silent mode on but it doesn't care it seems to do its own thing. I also don't have it auto defrag I run that every so often, but I just use the norton one. I do stop a few processes before gaming,,, there is an apple mobile device running as a service that when I kill it, it comes back and runs, for the most part my CPUs are less than 1% when not gaming.

 

ya this rig killed back in 2007, I feel like I got my money out of it.

 

So it sounds like your leaning toward just pick up another 2GB and leave 32 bit in this thing?

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ZeroDamage Newbie

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I would honestly consider a full upgrade at this point. The CPU isn't that slow but it is the older Core 2 Duo technology and is a few generations behind now. CPU speed isn't really a factor at this point in time.

 

Your video card is several years behind the technology curve as well. I had an 8800 5 or so years ago; that is a long time in terms of gaming technology and games do not slow down in how they advance.

 

You only have 2 gigs of RAM (never mind the older technology). 2 Gigs is half the bare minimum you want these days. With RAM as cheap as it is, running 8Gigs is the way to go but it would be a waste to get 8Gigs of DDR2. If you have the money, planning a full upgrade for whatever your budget is would be the thing to do in my opinion.

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UnderCover Newbie

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Thanks guys, I really appreciate all your opinions and options.

 

For kicks and giggles I think I will upgrade to 64bit just for the experience and try and pick up some cheap memory. Worse case I will have a good P.C. for ????? oh well something. Plus it will be interesting if it runs smoother.

 

Plus I will start the process of looking for what I want in a new rig.

 

Thanks again.

 

UC

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yErMoTH3r Newbie

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8gb

64bit

 

i like the rest of your hardware - nice cheap upgrade in my eyes. you will really notice it when the ram is in.

 

conversely, you are in for a full rebuild less cdrom and case and maybe powersupply if you go down the mobo/processor road.

 

Opt1: more ram - $100

Opt2: $700-$900

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UnderCover Newbie

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well the guy that was going to get me a great deal has taken too long so I grabbed 4GB of G.Skill memory, so now I at least have 6GB. plus I picked up a Crucial 128GB SSD. I just finished installing win7 64 and have the updates installed plus norton, and video drivers. Still need to do the sound setup. I am hoping my in game video is smoother now.

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ZeroDamage Newbie

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Well there's a big part of your problem: Norton. There is no reason to run it if it is your personal computer and you are not surfing unsavory websites and opening every .exe attachment that is sent to you. If you have to run an antivirus, install Microsoft Security Essentials and be done with it. It works really well and is only a fraction of the resource hog that Norton is. It even has better detection than Norton.

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